Autumn Landscape, 1897
Oil on board, 12 x 16”
Signed and dated lower left
Ranger gathered like-minded artists at Florence Griswold’s house in Old Lyme in 1900 to begin what he hoped would be an art colony like the one he had known in the Forest of Fontainebleau. After Childe Hassam’s arrival in 1903 changed the emphasis to Impressionism, Ranger moved to Noank, leaving others to keep alive at Lyme the somber tones and quiet moods of the Barbizon school.
Mason’s Island, still forested then by ancient oaks, is just across the inlet from Noank. Here Ranger found his new Fontainebleau. He saw it as a sanctuary, immune to time and change.